A Single Layer

So, I've actually been reading Leviathan , pictured and posted below, and I find myself continually approaching it as an academic. It's hard not to, since the book re-imagines the origins and development of the first world war. There's so much cultural, social, historical, philosophical richness to those origins. Who could resist a little intellectual elaboration? I scribbled about four pages worth of thoughts on steampunk's revisionist historicism as a method of preservation against eschatological fears (among other things). Then I read this post over at Millinerd , and I get a whole other wave of thoughts on steampunk as a way of infusing post-enlightenment history with the aesthetic consciousness it originally lacked. I have no idea if I'm off-base with this or not, but we have wandered around for so many years regretting the apparently ugliness of the inheritance of the enlightenment. Could steampunk be a way of unconsciously (or otherwise) re-imagining that br...

Scott Westerfield picked up on the steampunk train because he is smart about stories and creative with his brain. Mucho kudos to him for that. But as much as you should read his books ( Leviathan , for a start, which is sitting by my bedside even now), you should also read his blog . If nothing else, read it for phrases like "RATHER MORE BAD" referring to costumed Storm Troopers as opposed to aristocratic nobility, all in response to that Charles Stross article that's got steamers all fabulously defensive of their genre. Gah. He's delightful. Charles Stross, on the other hand, is not. At least not in this post. We'd probably have some lovely conversations over even lovelier tea in any other context. But really, only someone very short-sighted would be so condescending both to history and to fanboys all in one fell swoop - and on the internet, no less! The irony will come around in about a hundred years when Stross's grandchildren look at our generation and c...

Felix Gilman, author of The Half-Made World , was discussing the trend toward anachronistic fiction over at Omnivoracious yesterday. (Sidenote: If you are interested in trends in the book industry and you don't follow Omnivoracious, you are doing yourself a disservice. It's Amazon's book blog, and they do a fabulous job of letting you know all the most relevant book buzz in the most unpretentious and jovial sort of way.) I had seen the cover for The Half-Made World somewhere else last week and was half a click away from posting it to my Pinterest board featuring lovely cover designs when something (squirrel?) distracted me. Serious failure. This cover just makes me love cover art all the more. I double-perked up about the book when I noticed the Ursula K. LeGuin blurb on the front. Sometimes when a notable author blurbs your book that just means you got lucky. Or you found yourself a really awesome publicist/agent/editor/spy who managed to blackmail said notable author i...

In about two and a half weeks, I will be making the trek to Seattle to join a hoard of rather fascinating people celebrating a fast-growing subgenre of fantasy/sci-fi most commonly known as Steampunk. As a publisher, I will be sitting on panels acknowledging the importance of the sub-genre, the growth of the sub-genre into it's own genre proper, and a number of other things I haven't figured out yet. The truth is that I know very little about steampunk in general. What I do know, I know as a not-so-distant observer of culture. I know as an expert in my field - the book industry. I know as much as anyone else who has visited steampunk blogs, webshops, and bookstore shelves with the curious fascination that comes over one who feels too old to join a new trend but young enough to realize that I would have eaten it up ten years ago. Even so, when I mention steampunk to friends/family/acquaintances, I realize that I do, actually, know a lot more than I give myself credit for. Much o...

Dear World, God provides. Don't believe me? Well . . . he does. That's all I can say. On a strangely not unrelated note, I've been thinking about how Harry Potter, or more specifically, Hogwarts, has set the cultural stage for the successful rise and dominance of Steampunk as a legitimate and widespread aesthetic. Just stick that in your cap and chew on it. Or . . . something.